1.2 “New alliances”
Sam proves he is at least the fittest of the cops as they pursue Kim Trent, wanted armed robber, and he tackles him to the ground. They’re sure that Trent is planning another robbery with his cronies, and want the details. But when Hunt plants money on the robber to try to make him talk, Sam takes exception. This is not how he was trained to do police work. He has yet to fully accept that he is (apparently) in a totally different era, and that things are done differently here. He proves this further when, visiting Trent in his cell, he reminds him that he’s entitled to a lawyer, whereupon soon after their suspect is walking out of the police station. Hunt is not pleased.
He is however pleased --- in his way --- when he growls at Sam that there’s a jewellery heist going on in the High Street. They speed to the location and engage the robbers, but in the course of this action a young woman in a car is shot. Sam knows her from the station and is distraught, now seeing himself directly responsible for having allowed Trent to walk. He tells Hunt it isn’t his fault, but even as he says it he knows it isn’t true: he just doesn’t want to face the uncomfortable, damning fact that he was trying to play 21st century cop in 20th century Manchester and had he played things Gene’s way, Trent would have been locked up and unable to pull the job, and June would not now be lying in a hospital bed.
Refusing to go back into work, wallowing in despair, Sam goes eventually to see June at the hospital. There he runs into Hunt and the two kick the crap out of each other, working out their shared aggression until they’re knackered and return to the station. A break in the case occurs when they realise that a local streetsweeper saw one of the felons --- Trent --- but was too scared to say anything. At the identity parade though Leonard the streetsweeper bottles it, coming face to face with Trent. Sam prevails upon him by bringing him to see June in hospital, and promising that he’ll be protected if he identifies the robber.
Before he can testify though, they have to keep him safe, so Annie stays in the flat with him while Ray and Chris grumpily complete the stakeout in a car outside. Not for long though. By the time Annie raises the alarm Chris and Ray are long gone, headed to the pub. Exasperated and worried, Sam marshalls the troops and they all head for Leonard’s flat. Both Annie and the witness are by that time long gone. When Sam finds them they are pursued by the three bank robbers, and radio reception is not good, so they can’t call for backup. Cornered in the warehouse they are lucky that Hunt arrives just in time to save the day. Leonard identifies Trent back at the station and he’s charged.
Sam goes to see June, who is still in a coma but is now off the critical list, but just as he tells her this welcome news all the lights go out and suddenly he finds himself shut in, the doors locking in the darkness and a voice announces that “his life support just shut off!” At the last moment the doors open, and he is back in “the real world”. But it’s been a shock, whether it was a hallucination or not.
QUOTES
Sam: “Kim Trent, I am arresting you on suspicion of armed robbery. You do not have to say anything --- no, that’s not it, is it? You have the right to remain silent … um …”
Hunt: “Ye’re nicked!”
Trent: “Doin’ the front crawl ain’t a crime, Mister Hunt.”
Hunt: “You were born: that’s the crime”.
Sam (to Hunt, disgusted): “Nothing fixes things quite like a punch, does it?”
Sam: “This place is like Guantanamo Bay!”
Hunt: “Give over, it’s nothing like Spain!”
Annie: “You’ve got to believe in the people around you.”
(Almost encapsulating the principal dilemma Sam struggles with, in one sentence: does he let himself believe that somehow he has gone back in time, and ended up in 1973, and then just act accordingly? Or does he refuse to accept such a thing has happened, could happen? And if the former, then what price his sanity if he is in fact lying comatose in a hospital bed, as doctors and loved ones try to break through his carefully constructed fantasy world? Will he remain here forever, if he cannot deny the existence of “here”, if he accepts “here” as a fact, inexplicable but ultimately unalterable? Will he be stuck behind his very own looking-glass?
But then, if this is somehow real, and he refuses to accept it, will he drive himself completely mad trying to figrue out what’s going on? Which way should he jump, or, indeed, should he jump at all? Maybe just sitting back, accepting it for now, and trying to work it out or hoping a solution or explanation will present itself is the safest, even the sanest way to approach this thing?)
Sam: “What if we offer him (Leonard) immunity?”
Hunt: “From what? Measles? Mumps? What?”
Sam: “Witness protection.”
Hunt: “Right now the only thing he needs protection from is me!”
MUSIC
“Live and let die” (Paul McCartney and Wings)
Used to great effect. In the opening scene, as Sam stares at himself in his shaving mirror, trying to decide whether or not this is real, the first verse plays in the distance, then as the guitar punches in for the chorus a door slams open and four coppers in their swimming trunks --- Hunt, Sam, Chris and Ray --- explode from the baths, in hot pursuit of a felon. Class!
“Saga of the ageing orphan” (Thin Lizzy)
Plays in the background as Annie tries to convince Sam to go back to work
“Drum song” (Willie Lindo and the Charmers Band)
Plays in the background at Nelson’s pub.
“Lazy” (Deep Purple)
Plays as Gene and Sam fight beside June’s hospital bed, and as they return to the station, and instigate the search for the robbers’ car.
“One of these days” (Pink Floyd)
Plays as the guys mobilise to try to help Annie and Leonard
“Dream land” by The Upsetters
Again, background music at Nelson’s.
PCRs
When asked to account for his whereabouts on a certain date, Trent grins that he was at a cookery class, “having it off” with Fanny Craddock.
A well known cookery expert, sort of like Delia Smith in our time.
Nelson responds to Gene Hunt as “Kemo sabe”. Perhaps doubly ironic as
this was the name Tonto, his Indian sidekick, used for The Lone Ranger
“White dogs
hit”, says Sam, as they grab Trent and force him to the ground. “That takes me back.” Wonder why it changed to brown? Maybe people started being more careful about what they fed their dogs...
Those clever little touches
As the boys run after the criminal (in thier swimming trunks!) they barrel down a set of steps up which an old lady is coming with her shopping trolley. Barging past, they all but knock her over. The only one to stop and help her is Sam, and for his pains he gets the sharp end of her tongue and hit over the head with her handbag! Moral: don’t bother, just keep running. It ain’t worth it.
When they do catch the criminal, Chris jumps back in alarm and disgust, as the guy has a varucca!
Showing the gulf between paramedics over thirty years, Sam is angry when, having given a load of critical information about June to the ambulance man, he is told “I’m not a doctor, chief: I’m the ambulance driver!” Back then, it wasn’t considered necessary for the man who drove the ambulance to have any medical training, unlike now; he may as well have been driving a bread van for all the good he is to June at this point, and he is surprised that it turns out that the person all this medical information is being fired at by the detective in front of him is in fact him. What’s he telling him for? He can’t do anything; doesn’t proabby even know what “BP” means, other than petrol!
When Sam hears what he thinks is a doctor talking about him (see “Tinfoil hat time?” below) the voice mentions that he was given a saline yesterday. Interestingly, this is the very advice Sam gave the clueless ambulance driver about June. Of course, it’s probably standard medical procedure, but still, it’s a quirky little connection…
When they ask the streetcleaner to identify Trent, Sam assures him that the criminal will be behind a two-way mirror. Little does he know that that’s not how they did it back in ‘73, and poor Leonard ends up face-to-face with the man he’s supposed to be fingering!
Welcome to the "Real World"
Is it coincidence that when arrested, Trent spits “Enjoy it while you can boys, cos this is fantasy time”? And that he looks directly at Sam when he says it?
Hunt asks Sam in exasperation “How do you do things where you come from?” He qualifies this by referring to Hyde, the area Sam is supposed to have been transferred from, but for a moment there, is he hinting that he actually believes Sam’s story of being from the future? Does he know more than he’s saying?
Tinfoil hat time?
When Sam returns to the station after seeing June into the ambulance, he begins to hear odd sounds: hospital tannoy announcements. The
beep-beep of medical monitors, And a voice, talking seemingly about him. Like a doctor talking about a patient… but as quickly as it began it is over, as Sam hears a play on the radio, and must now wonder if after all he only imagined hearing what he did.
Later, in his flat, he notices that the girl from the BBC test card has left the screen of his television and is terrified and incredulous to see her standing behind him. She too intimates he is in hospital, but poses the question as to whether it would be best to end it all now while he still can? But before he can digest this he wakes up. Or does he? Looking at the TV screen again, he sees the girl and her clown are back where they have always been, where we as kids always saw then, on the test card that came up before and after the day’s programmes.
Almost at the end of the episode, when Sam is in with June at the hospital, the doors slam shut and the lights go out (symbolism of his death?) and worried voices shout that his catheter, unattended for too long, has leaked and seeped into the electrics, shorting out his life support system. If real, it’s a very close call but seems to have been averted, as the lights come back on and the door opens. But has he survived, or is this the point at which he may have died?
Laughing in the face of Death
Sam grunts “Three IC1 males”. The radio operator looks confused. “You what?” she says. “Is that some sort of code?” Sam, shrugging, clarifies. “Three white blokes.”
When Sam suggests that it might be better if he were “sent back” (which Hunt obtusely takes to mean back to Hyde) Gene agrees, and Sam is amazed. “You can just do that?” he marvels. “Send me back?” Picking up the phone, Hunt nods. “Yeah. Hello?” he says into the receiver. “Is that the Wizard of Oz?” Covering the receiver he confides to Sam, “The Wizard will sort it out. It’s cos of the wonderful things he does!”